Links 9/8/2025

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1. The Rev Kev September 8, 2025 at 7:11 am

   “Treasury secretary says U.S. and European Union must partner to ‘collapse’ Russian economy”

   Secretary Scott Bessent is a genius. A giant that walks the financial world. His idea? Europe and the US getting together to collapse the Russian economy and force Putin to negotiate on western terms. This has never, ever been tried before. Perhaps Bessent could organize a series of packets of sanctions against them. I’m sure that the Russians will never see it coming.

   Idjut.

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2. Wukchumni September 8, 2025 at 7:43 am

   Why do we collect things? Cazadora
   ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

   I stopped collecting coins by the time I was 14 or so-I was much more interested in the pursuit of profit by buying or selling them (as a rule of thumb-aged round metal discs were almost never traded for other coins in the trade-it was all cash & carry) and although much of my business life was wholesale dealer-to-dealer transactions, most of it was going to end up with collectors in the end.

   I suppose my closest effort at getting to the end user would have been via eBay in the late 90’s, and it was gravy city in many ways in that I noticed much of what I sold was going to the hinterlands, where there were no coin stores or coin shows-the traditional way to do business last century.

   Those first couple years on eBay, I couldn’t believe how many would-be coin collectors were out there, finally getting a chance to acquire-and ridding me of all my inventory in the process. It took many years to bleed out, but by 2005 I was rid of everything.

   All the examples given in the article of collectors-save Joan Didion were men, and in the coin biz it was all male coin dealers for the most part-as well as collectors. I didn’t know of 1 serious female coin collector-she didn’t exist.

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   1. griffen September 8, 2025 at 9:38 am

      Pretty sure this is not new territory but the younger generations don’t have much interest in collecting items or treasured family “things” as opposed to travel, events and concerts. I will do the occasional concert but it’s nearly as often as say a leap year. Once every 3 to 4 years and I’m all set on concert attendance.

      Varied collections of family china are gathering dust as the nephews and nieces start families. Even if someone became interested where does it go…moved out of one closet and into another makes little sense at all. Could be useful for target shooting maybe ? The fourth or even fifth generation just won’t have an attachment it seems.

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      1. Wukchumni September 8, 2025 at 9:50 am

         I came of age in the great collecting era of the 1970’s, where damn near everything was a limited edition, and thus valuable!

         None of it is worth anything for the most part ( a highly desired Hummel figurine was worth around a grandido in the mid 70’s, saw one on eBay for a measly $20 recently) and the only redeeming value was the coins, medals, plates and whatnot made out of sterling silver, and only because of the old grey mare being worth $40 an ounce.

         You’re absolutely right about the younger adults not having any interest in what interested us, they aren’t wired the same-nor do they have the desire to have and hold things*-not their bag.

         *Sneakers notwithstanding, now why a pair of Air Jordans new in the box and made in Malaysia 40 years ago is worth tens of thousands of almighty bucks, i’ll never know.

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3. The Rev Kev September 8, 2025 at 8:01 am

   ” ‘Someone’ might have to blow up prospective Russia-China pipeline – Fox News host”

   Where do they find these idiots? Oh, yeah – Fox News. When I saw that image of Jesse Watters, I swore he looked like Anders Fogh Rasmussen’s kid brother. So I looked up his Wikipedia entry and found that this sort of thing is normal for him. He will make all sorts of despicable claims but when called out on it, chickens out. Watters Always Chickens Out. His claims on Canada were a classic for him-

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Watters

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   1. MicaT September 8, 2025 at 8:35 am

      Joe Biden?

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   2. Martin Oline September 8, 2025 at 8:37 am

      Thanks, Rev. I have a deep dislike for Jesse but reading through that wikipedia article has made me wash my hands. Not that there’s anything wrong with washing my hands. . .

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   3. Neutrino September 8, 2025 at 8:57 am

      If you look at him in profile, he is the model for the NPR logo, or an NPC. Can’t unsee that.

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   4. .human September 8, 2025 at 9:46 am

      “Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?”

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4. MicaT September 8, 2025 at 8:43 am

   Wild horses

   It’s actually a big problem. They have no natural predators. They are big, they eat a lot and actually destroy a lot of the natural vegetation for the native animals.
   In eastern oregon the same thing is happening, but there the horses are often released because people can’t afford to feed them.

   There is big push back against removing them by well meaning people who don’t understand the science of what’s
   Going on. And of course the damage and growth of the herds gets worse year by year. And coupled with climate change the damages are exacerbated

   The horses are not native.

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   1. Trees&Trunks September 8, 2025 at 9:41 am

      I would get a gun and a big freezer and start cooking.

      https://www.tasteatlas.com/best-rated-dishes-with-horses

      https://theworld.org/stories/2016/07/31/how-cook-your-horse

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   2. Mark Gisleson September 8, 2025 at 9:53 am

      NE Illinois along the WI border used to be one horse farm after another (long white-painted rail fences like in Kentucky). Then suddenly all the horses were gone. I honestly can’t remember when it happened, but I think it was right after the 2008 stock market collapse. No news stories about those horses but I’m pretty sure they met the same fate as the wild horses.

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   3. Lupana September 8, 2025 at 9:58 am

      3600 horses on 2.1 million acres doesn’t sound like a big problem to me. Whether the horses are native or not is open for debate – I’ve read varying opinions. But what is clear is that the cattle in those areas are not native and yet there seems to be no concerted effort to remove them unlike the native bison whose herds are culled or the wolves who are killed all to “protect” the cattle. It seems to me it comes down to money and power. Whether you believe they are native or not – they are naturalized at this point and maybe it’s ok to just enjoy their beauty. Live and let live seems a good policy both in how we treat other species and how we behave in the world overall.

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5. The Rev Kev September 8, 2025 at 8:49 am

   “West Point cancels ceremony to honor Tom Hanks as ‘outstanding US citizen’”

   Guess that Tom Hanks shouldn’t have voted for the Democrats. But man, this is so petty and mean-spirited this.

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   1. Wukchumni September 8, 2025 at 9:17 am

      In pre-9/11 America we toured the grounds of West Point perched above the Hudson River, and I daresay not a blade of grass was out of place, you could eat off of it…

      …in stark contrast less than 10 miles away ensconced in our metal cage we watched drug deals going down on the street in nearby Newburgh, a fair burb with a crime rate like you wouldn’t believe

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   2. griffen September 8, 2025 at 9:58 am

      Wondering if Secretary of the War Dept ran it by the Big boss to get a late approval or to quash the ceremonial honor to beloved actor Tom Hanks. Nothing too small or even trivial makes it past the eyes and ears in the Oval office.

      Trump be like, ” he let his friend Bubba die in Vietnam, I totally would have kept an eye out for my best buddy. That Forrest Gump was just a real loser, just not very good…”\ sarc

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6. leaf September 8, 2025 at 9:01 am

   Seems like every subsequent strike by Russia is now being labelled as the “largest strike of this war”. Now is this an arithmetic or geometric increase and progression? Perhaps one day enough drones will be produced to blanket the entire surface area of the EU

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7. Wukchumni September 8, 2025 at 9:03 am

   Tiny Town confidential:

   Our new big fat Greek restaurant-Tony’s Taverna, looks to finally open after about 6 years of being built-certainly a record of sorts.

   It has seating for 240 and parking for maybe a dozen vehicles, we’ll see how that works out, Opa! springs eternal~

   Full Disclosure: For at least a decade i’ve been spreading rumors of a coming Thai restaurant-none of them true whatsoever, but if you build it up, they’ll come… was my thinking.

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   1. The Rev Kev September 8, 2025 at 9:38 am

      You could get into their good books by suggesting an Uber zone for people to be dropped off and picked up thus relieving the parking situation. And then you could suggest they set up a hole in the wall Thai restaurant for takaways as there is a demand for it in Tiny Town – you.

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   2. ambrit September 8, 2025 at 9:49 am

      Oh no. Not another Padded Thai Resume.

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8. The Rev Kev September 8, 2025 at 9:17 am

   ‘Raphael Rashid
   @koryodynasty
   1/ Something that’s not being reported much re: ICE crackdown at Hyundai-LG Georgia battery factory: Korean companies investing billions cannot get proper visas, are then criminalised for bringing skilled workers to fill gaps American labour cannot. Sentiment is one of betrayal.’

   I realized something about Trump today. Take a look at that factory set up by the South Koreans. So they brought in some of their own people to keep production up and that place profitable which was just a business decision. Eventually, with a bit of pressure, you would have an American workforce trained up there. It was a sort of you scratch my back and I will scratch yours and is a normal way of doing things. But Trump does not think like that. His way of operating is that he is the hegemon and every other country is just a vassal so he can do to them whatever he like and does not have to respect them much less listen to them. That they will have to run to him like he did with those EU leaders begging for favours. The humiliation of those arrested South Koreans is just par for the course for him.

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   1. Wukchumni September 8, 2025 at 9:38 am

      If you go after the juche, is that anti-semitic?

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9. Revenant September 8, 2025 at 9:33 am

   Is Adam Tooze OK? Do we need to.stage an intervention?

   He appears to be disappearing up his own fundament, in a hermeneutics of the polycrisis, without actually, you know, defining and opposing the malefactors and poisonous nostrums that are blowing up society.

   His post linked to Aufhebunga Bunga (great name) who appear much more members of the “reality-based community”, so I suppose I should be grateful for that discovery.

   The post beneath, ” You don’t have to believe in their supremacy”, is doing the job that he is too paralysed by intellectual crisis to do….

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10. homeroid September 8, 2025 at 9:41 am

    Crap they want us to just die. Well shit we were Dead in the 1970’s now pushing our walkers were just Grateful.

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    1. ambrit September 8, 2025 at 9:53 am

       Neoliberalism’s Musical Interlude? “You’re Old and In the Way; Go Die.”

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11. Revenant September 8, 2025 at 9:42 am

    Larry Ellison, Oxford and Sir John Bell? What a fight, pass the popcorn!

    Larry Ellison is what he is.

    Oxford is the institution that prides itself on 900 years of saying “No”, as I was once told by the technology transfer office while trying to spin out a medical technology. In the same meeting, they told off their lawyer for trying to help me find a deal! (Spoiler – we found a deal)

    Sir John Bell is, by the account of my co-founders, an oceangoing stuffed shirt who chairs so many the Great and the Good activities that, fortunately, the poison of his personality and arrogant dogmatism is diluted and some science can take place in his absence.

    Sir John Bell has met his bureaucratic in-fighting match, perhaps, but my money is on Oxford, in the long game. Remember, the University and Colleges are ancient real estate corporations with a lecture theatre attached. Ellison has already overpaid 400% for a single pub. Wait until he finds out how much his Institute has cost him….

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12. griffen September 8, 2025 at 9:46 am

    Sports Desk entry, late edition. “No one circles the wagons like the Buffalo Bills!”. It’s not Frank Reich vs the hapless Houston Oilers eons ago but it goes into the books for an epic victory.

    My doubts were completely dismissed as a late game comeback, aided by a timely defensive forced turnover too, is the opening week* 1 highlight from the NFL. Someone get the Raven’s star running back Derrick Henry a bit of tacky tape, you gotta just hold on to the rock man.

    Apparently spitballs will be an acceptable form of handshake or congratulatory hug post game. No one permitted with in spitting distance ha ha…\sarc

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    1. Wukchumni September 8, 2025 at 9:56 am

       I take no shame in admitting that I went to bed when they were hopelessly 15 points down with seemingly no chance late in the 4th-the gawds have me just where they want me to be being a Long Suffering Bills Fan of some standing, the game’s in the refrigerator, the door’s closed, the light’s out, the eggs are cooling, the butter’s getting hard and the jello’s jigglin’ (hat tip to the late great Chick Hearn) was my thought, what a bad way to greet the new bright and shiny season, and then I wake up to a win, what the hell happened?

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       1. The Rev Kev September 8, 2025 at 10:16 am

          Had something like that with Rugby League back in ’91 in the Grand Final. The Penrith Panthers were being beaten hard by the Canberra Raiders and with only a quarter hour on the clock, people were leaving the stadiums as they did not want to see their team beaten again. And in those 15 minutes, the Penrith Panthers turned the whole game around and went on to victory-

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3TQ9oooxL0 (14:50 mins)

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13. The Rev Kev September 8, 2025 at 9:49 am

    “Trump says ready for ‘second phase’ of sanctions on countries buying Russian oil”

    Well that’s really only China, India, the EU and I think Saudi Arabia well. China can it back with counter sanctions, India is increasing the amount of oil it is buying, Trump would never hit Saudi Arabia so that only leaves the EU and they have promised that they would do this.

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14. Carolinian September 8, 2025 at 10:15 am

    Re Hyundai raid–so given this sudden Trump admin concern towards worker safety and human trafficking that means meat and chicken processors will be next? Surely it’s not just Korea.

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